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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2015 3:45:02 GMT -7
If anyone has read my other topics you know that my husband and I are separated. He is in counseling and I am too[separately not together}. Up until recently he has been saying he wants to get healed ,learn how to love and be loved and put our family back together. He was recently caught at more lies, betrayal, and pretending to do things he supposed to be doing in therapy [that I believed he was actually doing] but has been hiding and lying about instead.Just pretending . When confronted [and it wasn't pretty} he said he does not even want to text anymore and will not read mine ever.No more contact. What in the  Is this resigning to his addiction? did the devil win? Is it that avoiding shame is more important than healing and his wife? Please guys help me understand. thank you so much h |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2015 11:11:51 GMT -7
Sorry, Thurs nights is my SAA night and I wasn't on here at all yesterday.
Your concerns are valid Bent, but without knowing your hubby, giving you a definitive answer is going to be difficult. I can tell you that my wife is getting ready to move out in the middle of May. It isn't what I wanted, but after all I put her though, I understand and agree that for now, it is the right thing to do. We are not at each other's threats and I am truly working to make changes. I am in therapy, I have found a Church I like, I am on here, I attend SAA weekly, I am on day 20 or 21 of the Setting Captives Free Purity Course. My point being that I am focusing on making positive changes and there is nothing for me to hide. I have started a wonderful relationship with God, something I had never had before. Bottom line, no matter what happens with the wife and I, I will continue to work on me and make positive changes.
Regarding your husband, my only real significant thought is that if he is lying to you, he has something to hide. I have no idea what that might be. Only he knows the real truth to that. My guess is the more you push him to be honest and open up to you, the further away he will drift.
I'm not really in any position to give advice, but it occurs to me that maybe the best thing you can do right now is focus on you. Get your own life back on track. If God intends for the two of you to be together, he will make it so. In the meantime, the only thing you can control or have any influence over is your own life.
I hope that is helpful in some way. I know this is hard and you are going through a difficult time. I pray you find peace and a way forward.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2015 11:27:21 GMT -7
BOM, thank you. You don't know this but I follow your posts mainly because of your humility. You do understand and do seem to have much sorrow about wat has has happened to your life and your marriage. Yes I do know that my husband has much to hide and I know many details that he doesn't even know I now.At this point[16 yrs] why even confront him. I did recently, he was busted and that's when he had the above reaction and statement. I just don't know if he has a rock bottom. What he has to lose Y'know? if no longer living with your wife and child and not being able to pay your bills anymore , days going by like wildfire while you hole up with porn, and your relationship with God is ,,,,?? Just don't know what it will take. I hear someone on hear say something about 2 differents thoughts in addiction:1] what can I get by with and still try to do my recovery [or something like that]and 2] Ill do what ever it takes no matter what that is . Im afraid my husband is the former. Not to sound like a downer but there it is.
To a wife it is your husband just refusing to be faithful to you. out and out refusing to be faithful. hard to wrap your brain around that one. Anyway thanks BOM.Atleast you have the broken and contrite heart. That a big thing
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2015 2:02:12 GMT -7
BOM,
You gave good advice. I like how you respect your wife's decision and help her out. I've heard some horror stories about men who turn on their wives and make their lives miserable once they separate/divorce.
BNB, I am doing what I can to get my life back and if my marriage doesn't make it, at least I can stand on my own with the LORD's help.
I'm making no promises to my H. His sponsor said at this point, most wives have washed their hands of their husbands. They are already separated or divorced.
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KevinesKay
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Post by KevinesKay on Oct 16, 2016 18:52:53 GMT -7
The words, "Did the devil win?" really stick out on this post by BNB. And at that time, I really didn't have a straight answer. Looking back, I can see that Bentnotbroken is probably at a much better place without her husband than with him.
It's sad to hear the wives stories, but it's even sadder to hear of spouses that continue to be betrayed over and over again for years. They put up with so much. When I read Dr. Dobson's book, "Love Must be Tough," he emphasized the need for the betrayed spouse to create trauma in the relationship; to shock the cheating spouse into entering into a crisis/decision stage. If that doesn't happen, then the cheating spouse has no incentive to change.
I read of some random woman's story about her experiences with bad men in her life. One time, she recalls sobbing over the phone with her man asking, "Why do you treat me so bad?" And his honest response was, "Because you let me." This woman had a moment of clarity and started to never make this mistake of letting someone walk all over her heart again.
I'm not a big fan of divorce, but separation is not a bad thing. The PA or SA in the relationship must experience consequences if he/she cannot change. In these cases, consequences can be a blessing. They are a blessing because otherwise, I get away with it.
And if the spouse chooses to break away as we see in this case with BNB, well, it's really painful. It hurts. But it hurts a whole lot less than spending the rest of your life with someone who doesn't value your love. The devil would truly win in that case. If the spouse cannot really make a change of heart, then I suppose it's better not to have him/her around. And God will carry him/her through.
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teetop
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Post by teetop on Nov 22, 2016 16:38:19 GMT -7
Advice asked for while most of us can only scratch our heads in wonderment at the life we each choose to follow.
Some times we can only leave our way-ward spouse in the hand's of God, while we examine our own walk.
I just ran into this little item and though it wont answer the cry for help as much as it helps to understand what we are up-against. Both the wife and the husband.
UNFRUITFUL WORKS OF DARKNESS
'And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.'-- Eph_5:11.
We have seen in a former sermon that 'the fruit,' or outcome, 'of the Light' is a comprehensive perfection, consisting in all sorts and degrees of goodness and righteousness and truth. Therefore, the commandment, 'Walk as children of the light,' sums up all Christian morality. Is there need, then, for any additional precept? Yes; for Christian people do not live in an empty world. If there were no evil round them, and no proclivity to evil within them, it would be amply sufficient to say to them, 'Be true to the light which you behold.' But since both these things are, the commandment of my text is further necessary. We do not work in vacuum, and therefore friction and atmosphere have to be taken account of; and an essential part of 'walking as children of the light' is to know how to behave ourselves when confronted with 'the works of darkness.'
These Ephesian Christians lived in a state of society honeycombed with hideous immorality, the centre of which was the temple, which was their city's glory and shame. It was all but impossible for them to have nothing to do with the works of evil, unless, indeed, they went out of the world. But the difficulty of obedience does not affect the duty of obedience, nor slacken in the smallest degree the stringency of a command. This obligation lies upon us as fully as it did upon them, and the discharge of it by professing Christians would bring new life to moribund churches.
I. Let me ask you to note with me, first, the fruitlessness inherent in all the works of darkness.
You may remember that I pointed out, in a former discourse on the context, that the Apostle, here and elsewhere, draws a very significant distinction between 'works' and 'fruit,' and that distinction is put very strikingly in the words of my text. There are works which are barren. It is a grim thought that there may be abundant activity which, in the eyes of God, comes to just nothing; and that pages and pages of laborious calculations, when all summed up, have for result a great round 0. Men are busy, and hosts of them are doing what the old fairy stories tell us that evil spirits were condemned to do--spinning ropes out of sea-sand; and their life-work is nought when they come to reckon it up.
I have no time to dwell upon this thought, but I wish, just for a moment or two, to illustrate it.
All godless life is fruitless, inasmuch as it has no permanent results. Permanent results of a sort, indeed, follow everything that men do, for all our actions tend to make character, and they all have a share in fixing that which depends upon character--viz. destiny, both here and yonder. And thus the most fleeting of our deeds, which in one aspect is as transitory as the snow upon the great plains when the sun rises, leaves everlasting traces upon ourselves and upon our condition. But yet acts concerned with transitory things may have permanent fruit, or may be as transient as the things with which they are concerned. And the difference depends on the spirit in which they are done. If the roots are only in the surface-skin of soil, when that is pared off the plant goes. A life that is to be eternal must strike its roots through all the superficial humus down to the very heart of things. When its roots twine themselves round God then the deeds which blossom from them will blossom unfading for ever.
Think of men going empty-handed into another world, and saying, 'O Lord! I made a big fortune in Manchester when I lived there, and I left it all behind me'; or, 'I mastered a science, and one gleam of the light of eternity has antiquated it'; or, 'I gained prizes, won my aims, and they have all dropped from my hands, and here I stand, having to say in the most tragic sense: Nothing in my hands I bring.' And another man dies in the Lord, and his 'works do follow' him. It is not every vintage that bears exportation. Some wines are mellowed by crossing the ocean; some are turned into vinegar. The works of darkness are unfruitful because they are transient.
And they are unfruitful because, whilst they last, they yield no real satisfaction. The Apostle could say to another Church with a certainty as to what the answer would be, 'What fruit had ye then'--when ye were doing them--'in the things whereof ye are now ashamed?' And the answer is 'None!' Of course, it is true that men do bad things because they like them better than good. Of course, it is true that the misery of mankind is that they have no appetite in the general for the only real satisfaction. But it is also true that no man who feeds his heart and mind on anything short of God is really at rest in anything that he does or possesses. Occasional twinges of conscience, dim perceptions that after all they are walking in a vain show; glimpses of nobler possibilities, a vague unrest, an unwillingness to reflect and look the facts of their condition in the face, like men that will not take stock because they half suspect that they are insolvent--these are the conditions that attach to all godless men's lives. There is no real fruit for their thirsty lips to feed upon. The smallest man is too large to be satisfied with anything short of Infinity, The human heart is like some narrow opening on a hill-side, so narrow that it looks as if a glassful of water would fill it. But it goes away down, down, down into the depths of the mountain, and you may pour in hogsheads and no effect is visible. God, and God alone, brings to the thirsty heart the fruit that it needs.
Another solemn thought illustrates the unfruitfulness of a godless life. There is no correspondence between what such a man does and what he is intended to do. Think of what the most degraded and sensuous wretch that shambles about the slums of a city, sodden with beer and rotten with profligacy, could be. Think of the raptures of devout contemplation and the energies of holy work which are possible for that soul, and then say--though it is an extreme case, the principle holds in less extreme cases--Are these things that men do apart from God, however shining, noble, illustrious they may be in the eyes of the world, and trumpeted forth by the mouthpieces of popular opinion, are these things worth calling fruits fit to be borne by such a tree? No more than the cankers on a rose-bush or the galls on an oak-tree are worthy of being called fruit are these works that some of you have as the only products of a life's activity. 'Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'
II. And now, secondly, notice the plain Christian duty of abstinence.
'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.' Now, the text, as it stands in our version, seems to suggest that these dark works are personified as companions whom a good man ought to avoid; and that, therefore, the bearing of the exhortation is, 'Have nothing to do, in your own individual lives, with evil things that one man can commit.' But I take it that, important as that injunction and prohibition is, the Apostle's meaning is somewhat different, and that my text would perhaps be more accurately translated if another word were substituted for 'have no fellowship with.' The original expression seems rather to mean, 'Do not go partners with other people in works of darkness, which it takes more than one to commit.' Or, to put it into another language, the Apostle is regarding Christian people here as members of society, and exhorting them to a certain course of conduct in reference to plain and palpable existing evils around them. And such an exhortation to the duty of plain abstinence from things that the opinion of the world around us has no objection to, but which are contrary to the light, is addressed to all Christian people.
The need of it I do not require to illustrate at any length. But let me remind you that the devil has no more cunning way of securing a long lease of life for any evil than getting Christian people and Christian Churches to give it their sanction. What was it that kept slavery alive for centuries? Largely, that Christian men solemnly declared that it was a divine institution. What is it that has kept war alive for all these centuries? Largely, that bishops and preachers have always been ready to bless colours, and to read a Christening service over a man-of-war--and, I suppose, to ask God that an eighty-ton gun might be blessed to smash our enemies to pieces, and not to blow our sailors to bits. And what is it that preserves the crying evils of our community, the immoralities, the drunkenness, the trade dishonesty, and all the other things that I do not need to remind you of in the pulpit? Largely this, that professing Christians are mixed up with them. If only the whole body of those who profess and call themselves Christians would shake their hands clear of all complicity with such things, they could not last. Individual responsibility for collective action needs to be far more solemnly laid to heart by professing Christians than ever it has been.
Nor need I remind you, I suppose, with what fatal effects on the Gospel and the Church itself all such complicity is attended. Even the companions of wrongdoers despise, whilst they fraternise with, the professing Christian who has no higher standard than their own. What was it that made the Church victorious over the combined forces of imperial persecution, pagan superstition, and philosophic speculation? I believe that among all the causes that a well-known historian has laid down for the triumph of Christianity, what was as powerful as--I was going to say even more than--the Gospel of peace and love which the Church proclaimed was the standard of austere morality which it held up to a world rotting in its own filth. And sure I am that wherever the Church says, 'So do not I, because of the fear of the Lord,' it will gain a power, and will be regarded with a possibly reluctant, but a very real, respect which no easy-going coming down to the level of popular moralities will ever secure for a silver-slippered Christianity. And so, brethren, I would say to you, Do not be afraid of the old name Puritan. Ignorant people use it as a scoff. It should be a crown of glory. 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.'
But how is this to be done? Well, of course, there is only one way of abstaining, and that is, to abstain. But there are a great many different ways of abstaining. Light is not fire. And the more that Christian people feel themselves bound to stand aloof from common evils, the more are they bound to see that they do it in the spirit of the Master, which is meekness. It is always an invidious position to take up. And if we take it up with any heat and temper, with any lack of moderation, with any look of ostentation of superior righteousness, or with any trace of the Boanerges spirit which says, 'Let us call down fire from heaven and consume them,' our testimony will be weakened, and the world will have a right to say to us, 'Jesus we know, and Paul we know; but who are ye?' 'Who made this man a judge and a divider over us?' 'In meekness instructing them that oppose themselves.'
III. Lastly, note the still harder Christian duty of vigorous protest.
The further duty beyond abstinence which the text enjoins is inadequately represented by our version, 'but rather reprove them.' For the word rendered in our version 'reprove' is the same which our Lord employed when He spoke of the mission of the Comforter as being to 'convince (or convict) the world of sin.' And it does not merely mean 'reprove,' but so to reprove as to produce the conviction which is the object of the reproof.
This task is laid on the shoulders of all professing Christians. A silent abstinence is not enough. No doubt, the best way, in some circumstances, to convict the darkness is to shine. Our holiness will convict sin of its ugliness. Our light will reveal the gloom. The presentation of a Christian life is the Christian man's mightiest weapon in his conflict with the world's evil. But that is not all. And if Christian people think that they have done all their duty, in regard to clamant and common iniquities, by simply abstaining from them and presenting a nobler example, they have yet to learn one very important chapter of their duty. A dumb Church is a dying Church, and it ought to be; for Christ has sent us here in order, amongst other things, that we may bring Christian principles to bear upon the actions of the community; and not be afraid to speak when we are called upon by conscience to do so.
Now I am not going to dwell upon this matter, but I want just to point out to you how, in the context here, there are two or three very important principles glanced at which bear upon it. And one of them is this, that one reason for speaking out is the very fact that the evils are so evil that a man is ashamed to speak about them. Did you ever notice this context, in which the Apostle, in the next verse to my text, gives the reason for his commandment to 'reprove' thus--'For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret'? Did you ever hear of a fantastic tenderness for morality so very sensitive that it is not at all shocked when the immoral things are done, but glows with virtuous indignation when a Christian man speaks out about them? There are plenty of people nowadays who tell us that it is 'indelicate' and 'indecent' and 'improper,' and I do not know how much else, for a Christian teacher or minister to say a word about certain moral scandals. But they do not say anything about the immorality and the indelicacy and the indecency of doing them. Let us have done with that hypocrisy, brethren. I am arguing for no disregard for proprieties; I want all fitting reticence observed, and I do not wish indiscriminate rebukes to be flung at foul things; but it is too much to require that, by reason of the very inky cloud of filth that they fling up like cuttlefish, they should escape censure. Let us remember Paul's exhortation, and reprove because the things are too bad to be spoken about.
Further, note in the context the thought that the conviction of the darkness comes from the flashing upon it of the light. 'All things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light.' Which, being translated into other words, is this:--Be strong in your brave protest, because it only needs that the thing should be seen as it is, and called by its right name, in order to be condemned.
The Assyrians had a belief that if ever, by any chance, a demon saw himself in a mirror, he was frightened at his own ugliness and incontinently fled. And if Christian people would only hold up the mirror of Christian principle to the hosts of evil things that afflict our city and our country, they would vanish like ghosts at sunrise. They cannot stand the light, therefore let us cast the light upon them.
And do not forget the other final principle here, which is imperfectly represented by our translation. We ought to read, 'Whatever is made manifest is light.' Yes. In the physical world when light falls upon a thing, you see it because there is on it a surface of light. And in the moral world the intention of all this conviction is that the thing disclosed to be darkness should, in the very disclosure, cease to be dark, should forsake its nature and be transformed into light. Such transformation is not always the case. Alas! There are evil deeds on which the light falls, and it does nothing. But the purpose in all cases should be, and the issue in many will be, that the merciful conviction by the light will be followed by the conversion of darkness into light.
And so, dear brethren, I bring this text to your hearts, and lay it upon your consciences. We may not all be called upon to speak; we are all called upon to be. You can shine, and by shining show how dark the darkness is. The obligation is laid upon us all; the commandment still comes to every Christian which was given to the old prophet, 'Declare unto My people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sin.' A quaint old writer says that the presence of a saint 'hinders the devil of elbow room to do his tricks.' We can all rebuke sin by our righteousness, and by our shining reveal the darkness to itself. We do not walk as children of the light unless we keep ourselves from all connivance with works of darkness, and by all means at our disposal reprove and convict them. 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch no unclean thing, saith the Lord.'
From the works of: MacLaren, Alexander - Expositions on Ephesians
I had to ask myself why, why in this day and age claiming to be Christian, we run on feelings instead of obeying God in-spite of feelings. Will have to answer that next.
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Is this resigning to his addiction? did the devil win? Is it that avoiding shame is more important than healing and his wife? Please guys help me understand. thank you so much
